And From the Department of Lunacy…

Talk about taking those lemons and trying your damndest to make some lemonade, eh? The above screen grab is from Fox News on Friday. I found it at Opinio Juris, and had to share it with everyone here. Lunacy, indeed.

Crooks and Liars has some video of Bill Kristol on today’s Fox News Sunday, wherein he says, flat out, that the United States has not made a serious effort in Iraq for the last 3 years. Well, isn’t that nice to know? ThinkProgress has the transcript. Just a warning — it’s infuriating.

Oh, and according to Kristol, this is all Rummy’s fault. Is that a bus I hear rumbling along in the distance?

ThinkProgress also has an excerpt from This Week, wherein George Will flat out says that Iraq is already in civil war.

ZAKARIA: It was a very bad week for iraq. The fundamental problem here remains the original one, which is when people don’t have a sense of security because there were not enough American troops, they will revert to their script, their tribal loyalty, the Sunni and Shiite. This happens in every society. That is what is happening, a pervasive sense of insecurity has made them search for security in the things they can find, which is their sectarian identities. But the fact that a few hundred people died — and it is a terrible tragedy — it does not necessarily mean we’re on the brink of civil war. India goes through sectarian violence from time to time. Nigeria does —

STEPHANOPOULOS: What does civil war look like?

WILL: This. This is a civil war.

Should we start calling this the Poppy Bush Rebellion at this point — wherein the Old Man and his pals try to shake some sense into Junior? Or is this simply what Buckley is trying to do in his opinion article — distance the Conservative and Republican brands from the mess that is the Bush Administration before they are irretrievably tarred? (We had a great conversation about this throughout the comments threads yesterday, btw.)

Or maybe, just maybe, has reality begun to intrude on the neocon fantasy island — to the point that those on the kool-aid fringes are no longer willing to partake? No freaking clue. Would that reality had intruded well before we made the mess in the first place…but it is far too late to be thinking along those lines, isn’t it?

Swopa and Juan Cole have a lot more on where things are and are likely to go in Iraq, including Juan’s report that Sistani is now forming a militia.

As if that isn’t depressing enough, our prison at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan is apparently a Gitmo II. Great work, Gen. Miller, great work. Afghanistan, Gitmo and Iraq — it’s truly the torture tri-fecta for that guy, isn’t it?

Lovely that Miller’s still got a job at the Pentagon, and still gets to polish all those stars on his collar. Especially since it’s only been lower level folks that have had to take responsibility for any of the actions unbecoming our military personnel — heaven forbid the man giving all those nasty orders be held accountable or anything.

Oh, and for those who were asking earlier, I can’t find any news on Jill Carroll, either, other than this latest wire report that there is no news. They haven’t heard from her captors in a couple of weeks, but they are still hoping. Let’s hold onto that hope along with them.

Christy Hardin Smith

Christy is a "recovering" attorney, who earned her undergraduate degree at Smith College, in American Studies and Government, concentrating in American Foreign Policy. She then went on to graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the field of political science and international relations/security studies, before attending law school at the College of Law at West Virginia University, where she was Associate Editor of the Law Review. Christy was a partner in her own firm for several years, where she practiced in a number of areas including criminal defense, child abuse and neglect representation, domestic law, civil litigation, and she was an attorney for a small municipality, before switching hats to become a state prosecutor. Christy has extensive trial experience, and has worked for years both in and out of the court system to improve the lives of at risk children.